Personally I would much rather have Blizzard re-work Zen Med to work as a more concrete Raid cooldown instead of the current "Buffed up Grounding Totem" mechanic before they cave into giving WW's Revival. Yes giving Revival to WW would be an easy way out, but given how horribly designed Zen Med is, I would rather see them change Zen Med instead.

hmmm, just a thought, but what if you could make one of the SEF clones channel zen med instead of the monk himself? and just be an aura of significant spell damage reduction? Just spitballing.

Making Zen med a good raid cd brings the problems of BrM and MW getting it too.

What about Healing Tide Totems for Shamans? Before 5.4 Almost every Shaman chose Healing Tide Totem (5.4 it's becoming baseline) for that tier. It didn't matter if you were resto, enhance, or ele, you still got it, and raid leaders asked for you to drop it. I'm fine with BrM and MW getting it since it gives raid leaders options. "The BrM is currently tanking Heroic Dark Animus, and we need CDs for the next two Interupting Jolts (which does 400k damage to all players). WW, get the first one, MW get the second. MW, use your Revival for the third one." It still gives us a reason to be in raid and to provide a meaningful cooldown.

What I'm saying is that if it's changed to something like Devotion Aura, where all specs have access to it and gives meaning to bringing a monk, no matter the spec, just for the cooldown, then I'm for it.

Sure it would be nice, but as blizz have said they think there is too many raid cds already. MW getting both revival and good raid cd via zen med might be too much.

If you want to be technical, Blizzard considers Zen Med AS a Raid Cooldown. Given that it is such a situational spell to begin with, most people don't use it as a raid cooldown, instead only using the 90% damage reduction as a personal cooldown. I can think of only 2 times this tier that it's useful as a "raid cooldown" and that is Megara's Rampage and Heroic Durumu's Dark Parasite. Hence the reason why I suggest reworking Zen Med before going after other Utility options.

He has a very valid point when he talks about the cooldown arms race. A better solution than giving Windwalker more utility would be removing excesses of it from other classes, however that kind of change is more suited to expansion overhauls than mid-expansion patches.

He has a very valid point when he talks about the cooldown arms race. A better solution than giving Windwalker more utility would be removing excesses of it from other classes, however that kind of change is more suited to expansion overhauls than mid-expansion patches.

No, his point is not valid at all because smoke bomb was added a few months ago AND they are giving a raid cd to DKs in 5.4. So it's fair for other classes to demand utilities while for ours is not.

if we want utility we just need to spam the shit out of his twitter account. see how they (the devs) talk about "we get many complaints about X and that's why we are changing Y or class X gets cooldown Z", i guess that's how it works nowadays. sad but true.

Making Zen med a good raid cd brings the problems of BrM and MW getting it too.

Because no ability in this game does different things for different specs...

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Originally Posted by Chiasmus

He has a very valid point when he talks about the cooldown arms race. A better solution than giving Windwalker more utility would be removing excesses of it from other classes, however that kind of change is more suited to expansion overhauls than mid-expansion patches.

Every melee in the game has one, it's kind of late to be worried about an arms race... lol they quite literally gave warriors 3+ raid cooldowns this expansion, but monks can't have 1.

At level 79 or below, yea it would take you longer to get to 15 stacks. But you have to realize the new Mastery is a chance to generate a second TeB. At 10,200 mastery; 7,200 plus the Mastery buff; that equate to 50% Chance to proc. At 50%, your at the same point as you are on live; where it will take you 30-37 seconds (depending on the T15 4-piece) to reach 15 stack. (10 stacks * 1.5 = 15 stacks)

At this point I'm not too worried about the 90% damage increase compared to the 197.567% TeB you have from a Rune buffed TeB. At least for me, only half of my TeB's are Rune buffed. So for you, a non-Rune buffed TeB is equal to 68.32%. That is an average of 132.943% TeB. That is NOT counting the fact that there will be down-time where you will not have TeB up at all.

I don't think they will bump up the TeB to 8-9% (132.943% / 15 = 8.863%), but 7% is the most I can see them bumping the value of TeB. Then from there either bump up the damage bonus of either Tiger stance or RSK debuff and/or maybe slight adjustment to the damage of any or none of the main abilities.

It doesn't take 30-37 seconds on live to reach 10 stacks, It takes me 28 seconds and it takes double that on PTR

What I get from the above post is that with those PTR stats and a Mastery > Crit priority you can obtain around 23% more uptime on a 90% damage buff. At first glance this looks more attractive than that crit rating. I don't think it's worth debating whether the changes are better or worse; they are happening regardless. Should just focus on figuring out how to maximize what we are given.

Req, test that again when the new PTR patch hits. I'm curious regarding what kind of data you will find. Current PTR is a little behind the notes.

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Originally Posted by The Monarch

What I get from the above post is that with those PTR stats and a Mastery > Crit priority you can obtain around 23% more uptime on a 90% damage buff. At first glance this looks more attractive than that crit rating. I don't think it's worth debating whether the changes are better or worse; they are happening regardless. Should just focus on figuring out how to maximize what we are given.

There is no such thing as TEB uptime. You can use it as much or as little as you want.

Very cool. Starting to get a little excited about 5.4. What secondary stat setup were you using for these calculations? Haste softcap > Mastery > Crit?

"I realized it is the struggle itself that is the most important. We must strive to be more than we are. It does not matter that we will never reach our ultimate goal. The effort yields its own rewards." -Data

Looks like the reverted the change to how we gain stacks from 4 back to 3 on the ptr. With the increase in damage to 6% per stack makes it seem like they are on the right track. That revision was needed 4 chi consumed was to much 3 should be nice.